The present invention relates to identity detection techniques and, more particularly, to a process for collecting and utilizing machine-identifying data of computers and other online appliances used in online interactions and transactions and associating the collected machine data with such online interactions.
The internet, or global computer network, represents a new medium for marketing similar to the way mail ordering and telephone ordering did in the past. A downside of internet marketing is that it also presents new opportunities for unscrupulous persons to take advantage of the mechanisms of internet transactions by fraudulent and deceptive practices. Merchants and financial institutions bear the initial costs of fraud. However, consumers ultimately pay the costs in the form of prices and credit rates which must take into account losses from fraud. Internet purchases typically involve the use of web page forms which are filled in by the customer with identity, address, purchase, shipping, and payment information and submitted to the online merchant for processing. Internet purchases are most often paid for by way of credit cards. While a merchant's software may be able to verify the existence and status of a credit card account number and an authorization for a specific amount, the merchant is often not able to match a credit card number with a specific purchaser or shipping address. Thus, absent any overt indication otherwise, a merchant generally assumes that anyone using a credit card is authorized to do so and that a customer is who he identifies himself to be.
An important step in combating fraud is accurate identification of the computers through which customers make transactions and associating such identities with transactions which arouse suspicions or which ultimately turn out to be fraudulent. Basic machine identity is essential to the manner in which the internet operates. We speak in terms of “going” to a web site. In reality, “going” to a web site involves sending a request for a web page file in a directory or folder on a computer located at a specific internet protocol, or IP, address. In order for the web page file to be returned to the requesting computer for processing into a displayed “web page”, the request must include return “directions” in the form of the basic identity of the requesting computer, including its IP address. Some web sites are implemented with software which enables responses to web page requests to be tailored to specifics of the requesting machine's configuration, specific web browser, and the like. For this reason, current versions of browsers usually communicate configuration information in addition to a return IP address and return path.
The IP address of a page requesting computer can give an indication of the specific country where the computer is located. Further, identification of a page-requesting computer can also recognize a returning user using the same computer as during a previous access. For example, placing an HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) “cookie” on a page-requesting computer can make it possible to identify the computer on a later access.
Because direct interaction with a customer's computer is essential in detecting fraud, it has been assumed that any viable fraud detection software must be integrated with a merchant's software. As a result, most existing fraud detection solutions require merchants to either abandon or extensively modify their existing web-based transaction processing software. An additional problem with focusing fraud detection at single merchants is that perpetrators of fraud often hit many merchants in an attempt to avoid or delay detection. Thus, an ideal system for fraud detection in online marketing would only minimally affect the merchant's existing software and would route fraud detection efforts through a central, third-party entity serving a large multitude of merchants.